Wow. I hope to be able to catch that when (if) it screens locally.posted by tomble at 11:55 PM on November 13, 2006

I don't know why this struck me, but the text in the trailer is unbelievably well-done. It seems to literally peel off the screen.

Okay, I guess I'm just jaded to post-apocalyptic films.posted by tehloki at 12:14 AM on November 14, 2006

I'm sure this thread will turn into a meh-fest, but I found the acting in the talking heads bits to be quite realistic and well-done. (The "we can't stay here" dramatic bit in the field...not so much.)

I wonder how they handle outdoor scenes...it's not exactly easy to clear out city blocks with a presumably-indie budget.posted by Ian A.T. at 12:20 AM on November 14, 2006

If you like the fake documentary post-apocalytptic, you might like the fake non-fiction of post-apocalyptic zombie war, World War Z. It's pretty good.posted by i_am_a_Jedi at 4:44 AM on November 14, 2006

I liked 28 Days Later better when it was called Day of the Triffids and had scary plants.posted by D.C. at 4:57 AM on November 14, 2006

I liked Day of the Triffids better when H.G. Wells wrote it and called it War of the Worlds.posted by Faint of Butt at 5:18 AM on November 14, 2006

I liked War of the Worlds better when.....oh.

<hopeful>The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ? </hopeful>posted by honest knave at 5:27 AM on November 14, 2006

I liked War of the Worlds better when it was called Super Pissed Giant Jesus and Four Flying Horses of Doom [of the Apocalypse], or, erm, the book of Revelations.posted by trinarian at 5:28 AM on November 14, 2006

If it's a psuedo-serious documentary, how did they get battery power for the cameras?posted by fungible at 7:29 AM on November 14, 2006

I hate previews that give away too much of the movie, but this one gave almost nothing. I watched it before I followed the second link, and if it hadn't been for the post I'd've had no idea what I was watching.posted by The corpse in the library at 7:39 AM on November 14, 2006

Its the end of the world and these people seem to be experiencing a certain... angst about it? I was lightly scotch-taped to my seat throughout.posted by hal9k at 7:39 AM on November 14, 2006

how did they get battery power for the cameras

Can you stuff 1,000,000 shrivelled corpses into a coal-fired power plant furnace and generate electricity with it? The world wonders.

oh, fuck it, let's just harvest some abandoned solar panels.posted by CynicalKnight at 7:42 AM on November 14, 2006

This could as easily be a preview for a documentary on starting a neighborhood food co-op. And yes, I'm including the scene with guns.posted by hal9k at 7:46 AM on November 14, 2006 [1 favorite]

i really like that they have 2 surfer characters...because, honestly, the average surfer here in santa cruz would love it if thousands of people didn't surf in the same spots every day...they dream about stuff like this.posted by th3ph17 at 8:14 AM on November 14, 2006

Speaking of 28 Days Later, there's a sequel coming out called 28 Weeks Later.

Oh how I long for a golden age of people leaving well enough alone.posted by PinkStainlessTail at 9:24 AM on November 14, 2006

That would be me: Metafilter's own Adam Savage.
I did this a few years back. Josh is a friend (I was the minister at his wedding) and asked me to consult on how a small community would survive in SF for years without any city infrastructure. I spent some time on the phone with the water people (the hetch hetchy system would likely feed water to the city for years) and power and solar folks, and started to tell them about it, and they stopped me in the middle of my first explanation, and asked me to be in the film.

We shot my scenes in my old workshop. I saw the film in LA back in 2003. It's good. Definitely creepy.posted by asavage at 9:39 AM on November 14, 2006

Someone really needs to make a 'Summon savage' card.posted by nathan_teske at 9:45 AM on November 14, 2006

This looks pretty good. But I don't know if I could go see it. I might get nightmares. Silly I know. But. Seriously.

Anybody have post-apocalyptic dreams? I ask because this movie seems less creepy and more dream like. (I wonder if the filmmaker was infuenced by dreams?)

I used to have re-occuring end-of-world dreams when I was kid all the time. Long before it was a popular theme in movies, etc.

I know why. I asked my dad what his job was.

When my dad got back from Vietnam his last job in the military was in Silk Purse part of the airbourne command structure in Mildenhall. The idea was that if a nuclear war broke out there were planes in the air 24hrs a day that could direct surviving ground forces.

My dad's job woud be to direct surviving Special Forces groups. If he was actually to DO his job it would be after the worst imaginable historical event in human history. And it was a suicide job. It's likely they would never land. If they did land everybody they new was dead. Everybody knew the mission was clearly insane.

Think about this. The man just got back from two combat tours in hell and the Army gives him a job of supervising the Apocalypse. Imagine how that would fuck with your head. The poor guy was already medicated.

So he just comes out and tells me this when I was like ten years old. He explains what MAD was. How ballistic missiles worked. What radiation sickness was.

A couple of times he woke up screaming and came to our rooms to move us to the basement in the middle of the night. Fucked up poor guy.

Some of these movies deeply effect me. Not the Zombie or Sci-Fi ones, but others. On the Beach, FI.posted by tkchrist at 12:06 PM on November 14, 2006 [6 favorites]

Holy freaking Jeebus, tkchrist.

It seriously makes me wonder about the sanity of those in power for plans like that to even have been made.posted by bitter-girl.com at 12:47 PM on November 14, 2006

tkchrist, get that story on This American Life. Really.posted by boo_radley at 12:54 PM on November 14, 2006

tkchrist, I have them all the time.

Then again, I'm an aficionado of post-apocalyptic literature, and I've already gotten some new titles from this thread.

In terms of what I recommend to others, here's an off-the-cuff partial list:

My recurring nightmare when I was a kid in the 80s was of nuclear devastation -- in the dream, I'm a survivor. My family is dead. I don't know if I have radiation sickness. I don't know how to get food, or water, or if it's safe to go outside.posted by eustacescrubb at 2:09 PM on November 14, 2006

Although it's not really a life after the end of the world book, in another way it is - Raymond Briggs' "When The Wind Blows." Book / DVD / Wiki. There's a small excerpt on this page. Harrowing.

Also, while searching, I found this site - EmptyWorld - "Apocalyptic and End of the World Fiction, Film and TV". The movie reviews seem to be a little on the short side and the book reviews are nonexistent, but as a list it doesn't seem too bad.posted by Zack_Replica at 2:23 PM on November 14, 2006 [1 favorite]

eustacescrubb: you were not alone. You are probably near me in age. Many people who were teens during the 80's expected the world to end in a huge nuclear war, striking suddenly, like a thief in the night (/purposeful).

And when I say we expected it, I don't mean expect as in you expect the Steelers might win the Super Bowl, I mean expect as in expecting the sun to come up tomorrow.

I used to spout off all the time as a teen how I would never see my 30th birthday. At the time, I was deathly serious.posted by Ynoxas at 2:59 PM on November 14, 2006

I used to spout off all the time as a teen how I would never see my 30th birthday. At the time, I was deathly serious.

I thought this, too. Though I came of age in the 1970's. The eighties heightened that anxiety. What with the MX missile and Reagan's gaff on live radio "outlawing" the Soviet Union "...the bombs drop in fifteen minutes" thing.

In 1977, in my Freshman year of high school, we had this big book report and presentation for an English class. The theme for the English assignment was "The Future."

While everyone else was doing reports on "The future of Sports Equipment", "Living on Mars" or "The First Woman President : Suzanne Sommers!" I did mine on nuclear war and proliferation.

I described how the there were two guys in missile silos with keys that had be turned simultaneously and they cold shoot eachother rather than end the wolrd - all that. I showed pictures of Hiroshima and explained MAD to them. I had this stop watch going with a count down to how long a Russian R-36/SS-18 ICBM launched from Saratov would take to hit Bellingham. All before any of this was widely known.

The teacher was this hippie lady and she let me go on and on. She loved it. Till kids were seriously freaked out and were yelling for me to stop. "Doesn't matter." I held up the watch. "You're all dead."

Man. What a Debbie Downer.

I got nearly got beat up by some kid afterwards. He said it was because I was a commie. But it was because he was scared shitless.posted by tkchrist at 3:29 PM on November 14, 2006 [3 favorites]

“Anybody have post-apocalyptic dreams?”

Heavy stuff man.
Remember the Soviet coup in August 1991? Gennadi Yanayev? If the Alfa spaznuts hadn’t refused the order to storm the parliment building that would’ve...sucked.
At best you’d have fragmentation and repression and states that could care less about arms limitation...yeah. Fun time to be in the service.

I gotta say, the Miracle Mile gets me every time. The first run through though killed me, ‘cause I had no idea what it was about. I thought it was the Glen Miller story redux.

And there are modern guys with the AEC who respond to nuclear terrorism threats. Go around with radiation detectors, etc. The clock is ticking, make one mistake, a shift in the wind, you miss something, the city dies. Thought I saw a piece in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. (I’ll look for it)
Yeah, I’d rather shoot at people while they shoot at me. It’s less stressful.posted by Smedleyman at 4:06 PM on November 14, 2006

Many people who were teens during the 80's expected the world to end in a huge nuclear war

Many of us who were in our twenties back then felt exactly the same way. Remember "dance until the bombs drop"? If You Love This Planet? Duck and cover?

I had my first nuclear nightmare when I was about 11 or 12, I think. The sixties and seventies were fertile times for apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fantasy.. wonder if we're seeing a rebirth of the genre. Though this film seems less the bang than the whimper.posted by jokeefe at 5:02 PM on November 14, 2006

Scrump, on the "disease" angle I would also recommend Blindness by Jose Saramago. his careful prose brings a poetry to total social collapse.posted by CynicalKnight at 8:56 PM on November 14, 2006

I've always sort of liked The Quiet Earth, a nifty sleeper flick about a guy who wakes up to find he may be the only person left on Earth.

It's got one of the greatest lines ever: "I... I have been condemned to live."posted by elendil71 at 4:22 PM on November 15, 2006

I liked The Postman by David Brin a lot. Apart from some of the wilder technological ideas, it seemed pretty believable. I've never seen the movie, but from what I've heard, it's to be avoided.posted by concrete at 7:37 PM on November 15, 2006

I absolutely love post-apocalyptic scenarios.

Had the nuclear nightmares as a kid as well - one was so vivid I turned it into a pretty damn good short-story. (Also had nightmares about cannibalism due to my father telling me the story of the Andes plane crash as we drove for hours in a blinding snowstorm - thanks dad!)

The Postman movies is not too bad 'concrete' - I've seen worse, the problem is that it simply couldn't do the book justice in the time allotted. It did capture some of the essence though.posted by jkaczor at 11:01 AM on November 16, 2006

Thank you Cloudscratcher and LazloHollyfeld! I've been looking for more on this since I heard of it in 2003.
(I'm a much kinder, gentler sort of stalker, really, you know I am, Adam!)

And thanks to all the rest on this thread, I've got a heck of a lot more watching and reading to do now. (You dang thinking people!)posted by mattfn at 8:39 AM on November 29, 2006

Tags

Share

About MetaFilter

MetaFilter is a weblog that anyone can contribute a link or a comment to. A typical weblog is one person posting their thoughts on the unique things they find on the web. This website exists to break down the barriers between people, to extend a weblog beyond just one person, and to foster discussion among its members.